Bob Knows Right From Wrong
With the Susan Heppeard incident exposed in all of its ugliness, Daryl Galyan embarked on a deeper discourse. At its heart was the notion of control, with the undercurrent being that Robert C. Hansen had violent urges he could not restrain. Call them obsessions. Call them compulsions. Galyan deftly managed to put the question to Hansen in the most generic way possible. He did so with a deep knowledge of the man’s criminal record.
Daryl Galyan: You’ve had a lot of incidents that have gone sour. Let me ask you a question to see if I’m not too off the ball park…
Inside each of us there’s a driving force that at times is very difficult to control. Alright? Being a male I think you’ve experienced it… There’s a good side of us and a bad side and at times the bad side of us causes us, forces us and has us do things that we can’t stop and can’t control.
And after it’s all over with, the good side stops and takes a look and says, “you shouldn’t have done that. It was wrong.” Am I too far off on that, Bob?
Sgt. Daryl Galyan, Statement of Robert Hansen, October 27, 1983
Confronted with that exegesis, Robert Hansen muttered a weak, “I guess not.” Galyan was on it immediately. “You guess not?” Galyan responded. “Okay, you don’t sound like you agree with me…”
HANSEN: Well, uh...
GALYAN: We do things that we really can't... we really can't stop ourselves from doing.
HANSEN: Oh, I don't agree with that... Anyone that has a conscience that's done something wrong, your conscience will tell you that's wrong, you know.
GALYAN: You think you have total control over all your actions all the time?
HANSEN: Yeah. Everybody whether they can't admit it knows entirely what's right and wrong... Just because a person goes and does something that they know is wrong, that don't mean that they don't have control over their bodies, a lot of people do things wrong, knowing that they're wrong.
Compulsion vs. Control
Robert Hansen’s absolutes did not come out of the blue. The man had a lifelong exposure to religion, both from his childhood and from wife Darla’s Christian predilections. There is, after all, little moral shading in the Old Testament, filled as it is with “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” There’s a reason for that. If humans were naturally filled with righteousness, God would not need the Ten Commandments to sayThou Shalt Worship Me four times in a row.
It’s no surprise, then, that Hansen’s responses to Galyan’s get out of jail free card were rigid, memorized incantations. Black and white. Right or wrong. Old Testament.
But Galyan and Flothe had another something up their collective sleeves. Court Records. An abundance of court records. Galyan was more than ready to contradict Hansen’s rigid incantation of “control,” by referencing testimony from his own trial records. To wit: Hansen was arrested on November 3, 1976, and charged with Larceny in a Building for stealing a chain saw from a Fred Meyer box store in Anchorage. Hansen entered a plea of guilty to this felony offense and was sentenced, on April 8, 1977, to five years imprisonment.
The court, in reaching that sentence, sought input from multiple witnesses, including one Dr. Robert McMannon, a psychiatrist who’d examined Hansen as part of the pre-trial ritual. Daryl Galyan gently waved that case in Hansen’s face. He was trying to underscore McMannon’s identification of compulsion (and regret) in his patient. It did not work out as planned. Robert Hansen pushed back with a quiet defiance, pushing the notion that Galyan and Flothe had violated the doctor-patient relationship. Here’s a sample:
GALYAN: Dr. McMannon [testified] that at times you would take things and after you go home regret taking them and turn around and return them to the store. But yet you would turn right around at another point in time and go do the same thing again. Do you really think you had control over that? Could you just stop yourself from taking those items? Or was it a compulsion that you just had to do it? And then the conscience later on plays a role?
FLOTHE: You testified at that time that you couldn't, prior to that time, you couldn't go into the store and leave and not take something. Why did you state that in Court if it was not true?
Robert Hansen sputtered his response, his words taut with growing indignation. How dare you, his comeback insinuated. How dare you confront me. The words were right at the surface, ready to jump.
HANSEN: The problem was, alright, the problem was this year when I, when I explained this to Dr. McMannon, whether he put down the whole damn thing or not, apparently you read all that, everything that I had told him, there's a lot of things that I'll be honest about, that I, if... I was always under the impression that when I talked to a Doctor that was between him and me and nobody else. I didn't know that these records could be gotten.
Weaponization?
It’s trendy these days to harp on the “weaponization” of the Justice System. Certainly the history of justice is less than pristine. Perhaps Robert Hansen was ahead of his time as he spewed his muttered-under-the-breath critique. You know, the cops had no business digging into his private medical records. It was illegal. Immoral. A miscarriage. Robert Hansen was pushing all the buttons, hoping for the best.
Who’s In Charge?
No matter that Galyan and Flothe were quick to clarify the source of their damning insights. Daryl said, “let me explain… these are only court testimonies that we have.” Glenn Flothe hastily added, “This is before the Judge.” In other words, this is public information, Bob. Public information in open court.
Hansen responded with barely suppressed anger. Glowered with a “how dare you” tone. He was, after all, a pro at this cops business. “Uh, okay,” he spit. “Look this up in your damn records, then.”
He went straight into a diatribe. A pity post that made pathetic somehow look normal.
When I was a young boy I worked at my dad’s shop, I would get maybe 35 to 45 cents, when I got to be a Junior, Sophomore and Senior, or Junior, Senior, I wouldn’t even get a dollar to spend.
I never had anything… Anything was never really denied me that I needed, clothing or whatever, you know, I had everything that I could possibly use. But as far as spending money I did not have, and ah, I guess more or less grew up with me that you don’t spend money, don’t spend money, and I just, to this day and age I hate to spend money.
I just… and if you want to turn this around and make something out of it, I don’t, I can’t do anything about that, but what I’m saying now is that I just hate to spend money. I mean, I would save every last dime I could ever get my hands on if it was all possible. And the reason I went and took things was that I just didn’t want… to spend money, that I would take something.
Robert Hansen, Statement of Robert Hansen, October 27, 1983
Hansen’s true obsession, it seemed, had revealed itself within the last lines in his diatribe. In his case, to “take something” inexorably led to the act of snuffing someone’s life. And now, halfway through this mess, Galyan and Flothe also understood they still hadn’t closed the deal. Sure, Hansen had confirmed he was a pathetic piece of shit. They just needed him to put those words in his own mouth.
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